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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (2007)
, 4 Oct 2014
Pulitzer Prize in 2008, and written by American-Dominican Junot Diaz, is
a partially autobiographical novel that tells the story of the
Cabrales, a family of Dominican immigrants in the USA. The story is
non-linear and covers a time span that goes from 1944 to 1995. There is a
part that follows the life of the Cabrales American children in the USA
following a natural chronology and line of events, while another part
tells the story of their parents and grandparents from the present to
the past, in reverse order.
Diaz's narrative is fresh, powerful, captivating, humorous and extremely original. His characters are unforgettable, well drawn, multifaceted and realistic, warm and close as if they were real people you have known for years - perhaps because they are based on true people. Not a moment of boredom - guaranteed.
The book gets you hooked from the very beginning. It is its characters, the many stories told in it, its humanity and believability, the historical period that focus on the Dominican Republic, and the real portray of the challenges, sufferings and process of survival and adaptation of the Dominican Diaspora in the USA.
Diaz's narrative is fresh, powerful, captivating, humorous and extremely original. His characters are unforgettable, well drawn, multifaceted and realistic, warm and close as if they were real people you have known for years - perhaps because they are based on true people. Not a moment of boredom - guaranteed.
The book gets you hooked from the very beginning. It is its characters, the many stories told in it, its humanity and believability, the historical period that focus on the Dominican Republic, and the real portray of the challenges, sufferings and process of survival and adaptation of the Dominican Diaspora in the USA.
The book is written mostly in English, but with a lot of Spanish paragraphs and phrasing, without any translation given (at least in the edition I used). Beyond the proper Spanish, you will also find the Spanglish used by modern generations of Latinos in the USA, which can be tricky to understand, too. You certainly need a good knowledge of both English and Spanish to read the book with easiness, and to get its vibe. The truth is that the book is very organic in its multilingualism, and that is because of it, and not despite it, that the book is believable and so very charming. At the same time, this is a very difficult book to translate into Spanish or into any other language, unless you provide translation footnotes, or even if you do. It is impossible to reproduce in reverse what the book says without losing content, style, freshness and believability, because the language used is embossed
in the cultural and personal experiences of
the characters. A good reason to learn Spanish or English!
The
book contains
footnotes explaining and detailing some of the historical background and
figures
mentioned in the story - the historical grip that makes the history
understandable to those readers who, like me, are not familiar with the
contemporary history of the Dominican Republic and with the Trujillato,
i. e. the dark terrible years of the Trujillo's dictatorship and the
policies of repression and extermination carried out by his regime.
The
book deserves the hype and good reviews that has had in the past years.
My only criticism is that the book is sometimes a bit soap-opera-ish,
even thought the story does not linger on anything that is not
accurate. Its cinematicity must be the reason why the rights of the
book were bought by the film industry to turn it into a movie.
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